Being the amazing, true-to-life adventures and (very likely) misadventures of a writer who seeks to take his education, activism and seemingly boundless energy to North Minneapolis, (NoMi) to help with a process of turning a rapidly revitalizing neighborhood into something approaching Urban Utopia. I am here to be near my child. From 02/08 to 06/15 this blog pushed free speech to the envelope, so others could take heart and speak unafraid. Email me at hoffjohnw@gmail.com

Sunday, September 14, 2014

JNS BLOG EXCLUSIVE: Trevante Williams Got A Stay Of Sentence BEFORE Alleged Murder Of Jaylin "Skooby" Davis, Then A Furlough For A Funeral AFTER Alleged Murder, Now Williams Is Nowhere To Be Found But JNS Blog Suggests Looking In Rockville, Illinois, Where Williams Was Previously Arrested With The Victim During A Narcotics Raid...

Facebook picture used under First Amendment Fair Comment and Criticism, blog
post by John HoffWanted In The Killing Of A Man Called "Skooby" Pictured above, murder victim Jaylin Davis, a/k/a "Skooby Straightdrop." JNS blog does not yet have an image of accused killer Trevante Williams to illustrate this blog post or I would certainly be using such an image.

Minneapolis man charged in house party slaying

Authorities have issued a warrant for a Brooklyn Center man accused of fatally shooting another man earlier this year after a dispute at a house party in north Minneapolis.-----------------------------------------------------------------------Copy and paste. No doubt my favorite word processing function EVER. By the way, here's further proof Williams is a resident of Brooklyn Center. One of my old jail rosters lists him at an address in that city. And a press release from Rockford, Illinois lists him as a resident of Brooklyn Center, arrested for allegedly resisting an officer at a gathering inside a residence with weapons and crack cocaine. More on this in a moment. JNS blog continues to see a slight demographic shift toward The Two Brooklyns. The shift is not so much in where crime happens, but where alleged criminals reside. Got Furlough For A Funeral Right After The Murder But let's get to that furlough for Williams, shall we? Mass media have had the story of the arrest warrant all to themselves for most of a week and managed to miss the most interesting fact, which is easily available by looking up Williams' criminal history online.Only two cases show up for Trevante Williams, which makes sense if he spends a significant portion of his life getting arrested in Rockford, Illinois. On Valentine's Day, 2012, Williams was charged with third degree assault (substantial bodily harm) and third degree riot (unlawful force or violence). The riot charge was dismissed and he pled to the assault charge. He was credited for 8 days and had a lot of probation conditions, which he violated a number of times according to the online court record.Currently, Williams still owes $128 on that case and a warrant was issued for him on September 3. It's the second case which gets really interesting. In August of 2013, Williams was charged with felony property theft. He was convicted on June 4, 2014. Williams was sentenced to 120 days in the workhouse, but there was a "stay of imposition" of the sentence. On June 21, with that sentence hanging over his head but not "imposed," Williams allegedly killed Jaylin Davis "Skooby Straightdrop" at a house party in North Minneapolis. But nobody was opening their mouth about the identity of the murderer, and incredibly, on June 26 Williams was granted "furlough" to attend a funeral on June 30. Here is the relevant portion of the electronic court record:------------------------------------------------

--------------The initials "EHM" stand for Electronic Home Monitoring, commonly a tracking device on the ankle. It wasn't until September 3 that an order was issued to apprehend Williams. So who was monitoring Williams all that time between the funeral in late June and the first week of September? Was he on parole? Was an ankle monitor involved? And whose funeral was he supposed to be attending? Something fell through the cracks here, but I can't blame the justice system all by itself. The deadly "house party" clearly didn't consist of just Williams and Davis. Probably dozens of people had relevant information and didn't come forward to police under the "snitches get stitches" cultural credo. Wild Times In Rockford, IllinoisA search for Trevante Williams of Brooklyn Center turns up that interesting old press release from Rockford, Illinois but also local media coverage from WXOW in nearby LaCrosse, Wisconsin, click here. Narcotics investigators raided a house in Rockford on the 1600 block of 5th Avenue, turning up crack cocaine, marijuana packaged for sale, a .44 Magnum and a two nine millimeter handguns. And guess who was arrested during that raid right along with Williams?Jaylin Davis, age 18, of Coon Rapids, Minnesota, for unlawful use of weapons. Yes, that would be the same Jaylin Davis who Williams is now accused of murdering. How did mass media completely miss what simple Google searches turn up so easily? Of the 7 people arrested, four were residents of Minnesota. Here's a list of those arrested from both the press release and WXOW.

Ashlynn Baxter, 25, Rockford

Possession with Intent to Deliver 10-30 grams Cannabis

Tareo Henry, 30, Rockford

Illinois Department of Corrections Warrant

Boone County Warrant

Shawnquez Simmons, 25, Rockford

Illinois Department of Corrections Warrant

Johnathan D. Williams, 20, Brooklyn Center, MN

Lake County Warrant

Jaylin D. Davis, 18, Coon Rapids, MN

Unlawful Use of Weapons

Resisting a Peace Officer

Dushown L. Willis, 23, Minneapolis, MN

Resisting a Peace Officer

Trevante M. Williams, 20, Brooklyn Center, MN

Resisting a Peace Officer

JNS blog predicts it is only a matter of time (most likely measured in months) before Williams is arrested in Illinois for some crime and then extradited to Minnesota to stand trial. Minnesota does not appear to be one of the states which habitually refuses to enforce its warrants on out of state fugitives, particularly for murder. (See License To Commit Crimes, an investigative expose by USA Today) In the meantime, in North Minneapolis we continue to see a disturbing pattern of crimes committed (allegedly) by people who were given some kind of big break by the justice system instead of doing time. Ironically, this holds true for the victims, too, as Jaylin "Skooby Straightdrop" was on probation at the time he was murdered.

Three appalling comments have been rejected, but I will summarize them:

One comment seems to say somebody is "looking" for somebody else, but it's hard to tell if the commenter means Trevante Williams, this blogger, or (most likely) both. I may publish this comment later if the "time stamp" on the comment allows any tracing but that's always been a difficult proposition for this blog to "trace" any comments to any electronic origin. Generally, it's an anonymous free fire zone.

Another comment makes an unproven and shocking statement about the individual on the right in the photo.

The last comment is the usual racist crap this blogger usually rejects, dressed up in vague phrases like "a certain element of humans."

Make that four comments rejected, the last comment rejected due to a bizarre and inarticulate vague racial diatribe. Look, commenter, you can do better than that. Discuss things rationally and in an articulate manner and I will publish your comments about alleged "reverse racism." But if you can't do better and lay off the profanity, I won't. I will reject your comments again and again.

Johnny, you have a peculiar manner of what either you want to post, or, you trample on the First Amendment. You have the right ,your own freedom, to C.Y.A. and that is your right but I alsoI pity the man who walk's through life looking over his shoulder. I realize you are laughing right now also.

The city needs to buy out more rentals to convert back to owner occupied dwellings. Or, the slumlords need to start putting their properties back on the market and unload them. I'm getting less and less concerned as time goes on about the well being of the "problem people" in North, they simply just need to be gone.

When rentals hit the market, they mostly become rentals once again. We need to stop this cycle of old rental property empires collapsing only to see new empires taking their place. The new empires are just more of the same.